Big 12 basketball lacking depth this season

Kansas brought a seven-game winning streak into this week. Oklahoma State has already beaten Tennessee and North Carolina State behind freshman point guard Marcus Smart, who is averaging 13 points, seven rebounds and 5.2 assists a game and is on the short list of the game’s top freshmen.

New coach Bruce Weber got Kansas State off to a respectable 7-2 start, and Oklahoma beat old foe Texas A&M 64-54 on Saturday to move to 7-2.

Iowa State (8-3), which was picked to finish eighth in the league, has lost to three quality opponents; Cincinnati, UNLV and Iowa.

Coach Bob Huggins led West Virginia to five straight NCAA tournaments out of the brutal Big East. Right now, the Mountaineers find themselves last in the Big 12.

West Virginia (4-5), fresh off a 15-point loss to No. 2 Michigan, is one of the nation’s worst shooting teams at just 38.9 percent. The Mountaineers have lost to Gonzaga and fellow Big 12 team Oklahoma, but they’ve also fallen to Davidson and Duquesne.

“We’ll win. We’ve won before and we’ll win again,” Huggins said. “We’ve got to continue to guard better and we’ve got to continue to rebound the ball better.”